The medical services industry has sought for several years to utilize technology to improve medical workflow efficiency. Specifically, physicians desire to transition from paper based records to electronic health record systems. At the same time, diagnostic devices are being enhanced to include digital technology and to provide digital communication interfaces for communication with external information systems.
Unfortunately, it has been difficult to achieve the ultimate goal of combining the existing devices and documentation systems into a single integrated system. This ultimate objective is frustrated by a number of factors. Firstly, PC's typically have a limited input/output capability, that is, a limited number of ports of various types required. Laptops and tablet or palmtop computers are often limited in their connections. Furthermore, PC's typically do not have the appropriate software (application software as well as operating system software and device drivers) needed to communicate with the wide variety of medical devices that are in common use. Furthermore, even if there was a PC configured to overcome these problems, the end user would be required to deal with a jumble of wires and interconnections to properly connect to the equipment relating to a particular patient. This is a particularly problematic issue if the PC is a mobile device, intended to travel with the medical professional, in which case the required connections and disconnections become a major inconvenience.
One approach to avoid the inconveniences just mentioned is to use networked communications. In the current state of the art, there are a wide variety of network adapters that can be used to connect multiple medical devices to a network so that data may be exchanged with electronic medical records systems. However, configuration of those network devices is complicated and requires significant technical support. The configurations are generally static in nature (for example, a specific serial port adapter is mapped to a static IP address, and then that static IP address is monitored by a PC to communicate with the device). When medical devices, computers and personnel move around in the healthcare organization, these static relationships need to be reconfigured, resulting in inconvenience to patients and healthcare providers.
Networking errors are common when using static IP addressing, and in a medical environment, those errors can be life threatening. Consider, for example, two ECG devices in different examination rooms, connected to a common network. A healthcare professional configuring a computer to monitor a patient (e.g., a mobile computer connected to the network via wireless network) will have no easy basis to determine which ECG is associated with a given IP address. Although the user could be presented with a list of ECG devices on the network, the time and energy spent in selecting the correct choice slows the workflow, and there is a risk that the wrong ECG device is selected, which can lead to a misdiagnosis and other threats to the patient. What is needed is a device that resolves these issues, provides interfaces to many types of medical devices and can automatically establish the correct network connections between those medical devices and the appropriate computers and applications in a dynamic, mobile environment.
In addition to the inefficiencies in device integration, there also exists a level of inefficiency in the medical arena with respect to asset management and workflow for medical and ancillary staff. Understanding the real time locations of physicians, nurses, staff, patients, devices, and other high value entities would provide tremendous immediate improvement in workflow. In addition to on-the-spot locating abilities, the ability to analyze patterns and problems using long term data for these mobile entities in the office could prove extremely valuable to making medical care more productive, efficient, reliable, safe, and profitable.